Introduction

Collected here are a series of sample questions covering many topics commonly found on the PSAE. For each question set/topic there is a short video explaining the concepts involved and a description of the solutions. A big chunk of the PSAE involves questions about biology. For most of you it has been a couple years since you took biology, and a refresher should be welcome.

These videos will provide enough detail to answer the associated questions, but hopefully will not overwhelm you with extra information. The idea here is not to make us all into biologists, but to help you to answer a few more questions correctly on test day.

Thanks for visiting and good luck in April!

What's on the test?

Many of you may be wondering where the questions for the PSAE exam come from. They are derived from the learning objectives established by the State of Illinois. So although we cannot know what the questions for the upcoming test will be exactly, we can get a very good idea by examining the Science Goals set out for Grade 11 students which can be found here and here. To save you a little time, we have the relevent biology standards here.

After looking over these standards you may think it's a lot of ground to cover. And you would be right, especially considering we are only covering the biology portion of the science standards here. But, most of you will be surprised at how much you know and can do, and by doing some review you can pick up a few points and that is a lot.